Yosi Sergant’s coyly named Manifest Equality show, his first spectacle since getting run out on a rail from DC, came and went this past week. And while he’s still not forthcoming with the scoop on his brief tenure( “I don’t kiss and tell” Yosi told the Legman) the former National Endowment for the Arts spokesman gave LA an idea of the potential lost to the White House, producing an ambitious charity show of art inspired by a message of gay rights and filling the massive (you can fly a helicopter around in there) former Big Lots space in Hollywood with the graphic art that flourishes here. Predictable pieces by Swoon and Shep Fairey were overshadowed by some strong work; we liked  Patrick Martinez’ painterly portraits of ice cream-eating gang-bangers and Scot Lefavor’s insightful image of ranger-buddy National Guard troopers. Nothing here on par with the sensual social realism of New York painter Paul Cadmus, but the swell crowd Yosi and colleague Jennifer Gross drew made the opening a blast.

The man who was Hipster-In-chief

Artists, idealists, genuine cultural producers just don’t mesh with the worker bee world of cover your ass/ do as little as possible without getting caught/risk management; immersed in all that square shit they are simply out of their element. Case in point: Yosi Sergant, the LA publicist who coordinated a youth-centric arts front for the Obama election campaign, attached the word “Hope” to a poster, then rewarded with a White House appointment to the National Endowment for the Arts famously fell as canon fodder to Glen Beck et al. Sergant is back in LA and for the first time since his conference call fired up right wing haters he’s spoken out in a comprehensive overview of his ascension-and getting thrown under the bus-today on
USC blog Neon Tommy.

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